Note 83 — EUROPEAN EXAMPLES. FRANCE.

For the legends of these saints, and much curious information respecting the craft and its guilds in early times, the reader may consult Lacroix, “Manners, Customs, and Dress in the Middle Ages;“ ”Histoire de la Chaussure,“ etc. That quaint old book, ”The Delightful, Princely, and Entertaining History of the Gentle Craft,” by T. Deloney, 1678, gives the story of the princely and saintly brothers in its English dress, and it is one of the strangest tales even in legendary lore. This story, Deloney tells us, accounts for the term “gentle craft” as applied to shoemaking, and explains the saying “a shoemaker’s son is a prince born.” The Princes Crispin and Crispinian becoming shoemakers sufficiently accounts for the former term, for

and the marriage of Crispine to Ursula, the daughter of the Emperor Maximinus, and the birth of a son to the Prince, will explain the latter. See the stories and ballads thereanent in Campion’s “Delightful History of the Gentle Craft,” Northampton, Taylor & Son, 2d ed., 1876, pp. 25-35. A most interesting and valuable little book on shoes and shoemakers in ancient and modern times.